Junkyard Hounds vol I
by MaussHauss
Summary: Orange looked like he'd been around the block, sure, but there was no way he was out of his thirties, if that. Heroin had tattooed the inside of his left arm like a bad girlfriend, and Larry tried to clear the booze from his vision to study the upstart as surely as he himself was being studied. Orange/White AU, 'reverse roles' prompt at k!meme. Slash.
1. Chapter 1

Lawrence 'Micky' Dimmick came from a long line of Irish beat-cops.

Most of his stocky build was mid-west rather than big apple, Brewers over Yankees over Giants as far as the baseball diamond was concerned - but that didn't stop New York from sinking its teeth into his walk, into his low-slung fist fights, in the way he spoke. It was Dimmick's proud second year after having scored Plainclothes Detective that he took the transfer to California. There were rumors of that last job, said the east coast wasn't safe for his likeness any more. That case had ended bloody, but the higher-ups weren't able to decide if the victory deserved a promotion or a transfer, so they gave Micky both.

The rumors continued to float up from the anchor of Lawrence Dimmick's career. 'Kingpin' Salvatore hadn't been much older than Micky himself, and they'd had a lot more in common than carefully attenuated disdain for the Red Sox. California would have to be a fresh start away from the steaming pile of disaster Salvatore had left behind.

It wasn't as if Micky would miss the east coast. He'd miss the few friends his job allowed him to have, sure; Alabama had been a great partner, but she had Clarence at the end of it all and Micky only ever had his paycheck to come home to.

A paycheck and a lot of bloody nightmares, only to wake up to an early-morning office buzzing too loudly about the wire transcripts and just how chummy Micky had been willing to get with his target and fuck_ that_ for a shaved bag of dicks; if he was going to get ousted for being too damn good at his job then hell, he'd go and be an excellent cop for somebody else's city. Trading the blitzroads of the north for the palm trees of the south while he was at it, as relaxing as an involuntary vacation could be.

* * *

His new partner was waiting for him at the bus station; a stodgy black man in clothes ten years too young for his potbelly named Jim Holdaway. Micky was settled a week at the motel before Holdaway got around to introducing him to an inside contact that called himself 'Longbeach Mike'. The three shared beers and cigarettes in the loudly painted L.A. apartment that was to be Lawrence Dimmick's home for the next year.

"That's a good nickname, man, but you're going to have to choose another."

Micky blinked up from his own file, papers and binders and city planning charts spread out on the floor between he and Holdaway. Longbeach had been dismissed not half an hour prior, citing girl troubles. "What's wrong with it? They don't know a guy named Micky from any other Tom Dick 'n Harry on the west side."

"Exactly, man." Holdaway had an easy confidence in his partnership, generous with compliments as much as he was with sage criticism. The thing was, Micky simply didn't look like a cop, and appearance was ninety percent of deception. The rest was just Improv, and Holdaway wasn't going to fail his partner by letting him get into any situation out of character. "Ain't no cat this side of the Mason Dixon going to understand that's an Irish thing, and if they did they'd think it was something a cop would go by. People these days watch too many damn movies," A gruff laugh. "Shit. What's your first name? Lawrence? Larry? Larry sounds way more westcoast than Micky, man, believe me."

"Okay sure, I believe you." The smile glinted in his eyes but did nothing to lift the near scowl Micky's mouth seemed stuck in (like a bulldog, like a bruiser, like a middle weight champion with his hair grown out in the cold Wisconsin Winter and brushed back in a thick wave to mimic the slick of a New York Italiano). He pushed the papers around his knees and fished out a marked page. "This my neighborhood?"

Holdaway glanced up from the character profile he was penning. "Yeah. We can go 'round tomorrow and I can show you what's changed since you've been away, _Larry_."

Micky blinked, nonplussed. Christ, but that was going to take some getting used to.

* * *

_**PostScript:**__ Another k!meme fill; prompted at Dreamwidth, _  
_polished at livejournal and posted up with edits/rewrites _  
_galore. One of these days, Dear Anon, I will actually finish _  
_a meme fill without getting distracted by the rest of the _  
_prompts. To the moon, Alice!_


	2. Chapter 2

It took three months for 'Larry' to get settled in Los Angeles, making sale and dealing cards with a few of Longbeach Mike's contacts to put a little genuity in his drug-dealer facade. By then Lawrence Dimmick had been introduced to the LA precinct, a crowd that was a whole helluva lot sunnier compared to the dour coffee-soaked NY station. He laughed to himself when he met the cadets and the beats, trying to recall a time when he himself had been so nervous and proud in his blues. Twenty eight was young for a detective, but the scene needed young.

Young and creative and fearless, and Micky bringing the cool confidence of a man whose job was in his very blood. He joked, they laughed. He'd wink. One or two would swoon. Stocky didn't stop him from Charming; made it better somehow actually, like you could trust him to know what imperfection meant and therefore to forgive your own flaws. Holdaway sat back, and observed.

Hell, Holdaway could barely contain his pride. Here was Micky slipping into Larry's skin (as easily as he had slipped into a fitted Hawaiian shirt) like he was already on the case, taking in names and faces that Holdaway would later use as quiz fodder over a greasy basket of nachos and a pitcher of beer. Shit, all they had to do was get Larry to the beach a few days a week, maybe scare the winter outta his skin and he'd fit right in. The accent could stay; it served to tell half a story, filled in the blanks as to just where Larry had been dealing before an assault charge forced him back home and back into Longbeach's circle.

Larry couldn't get too chummy in the station, though, lest some boot recognize him on the street and make a fatal reference; so he was ferreted away like Elvis from the building, ducking out of back entrance to waiting cab to seedy diner rendezvous with Longbeach.

* * *

Things were never going to be easier for Lawrence Dimmick than that day meeting the station. He wasn't under any delusions; it was a tough job he signed up for. A dangerous one. He needed the stamina to keep in character as well as the dissociation to recover himself when the job was over. Micky's one true flaw had always been his compassion; it made him a good cop but wasn't so great for detective work wherein he'd have to first befriend and then betray his targets. He was bad at handling that, at separating Micky from Larry from the son of Minerva and Haverd Dimmick.

Holdaway wasn't just a coach; he was also a confidante and a therapist, and an hour every sunday was dedicated to taking personal inventory of Larry's progress.

"I don't want you thinking I'm not prepared for this."

Holdaway sucked his teeth, nodding. "I know you're good at this job, man. I also know it's the good ones who got to struggle through the most shit. Sensitive artist types, yanno." He elbowed his way onto the couch, showing the check-sheet to Larry so he'd stop resisting the routine necessaries.

"So what about it, tough guy?" Larry snatched the paper with unexpected dexterity, holding it close and scrunching up his face like he didn't read too good (it was part of the character, to be a tad illiterate). He relaxed, handing the sheet back to Holdaway. "Got anything else for me? Besides redundant fucking questions, I mean."

Holdaway shrugged, clicking his pen. "I got a dialogue refinery, and an anecdote you could practice on. You're down with the vulgarities but I'm afraid your vernacular remains way too fucking refined, my man." A helpless laugh. "Nothing more suspicious than an intelligent drug-dealer."

"What about an intelligent thief? I was a thief and a grift for the TenTrees case."

Holdaway made a pensive noise in the back of his throat, spectacles sliding down his broad nose with late-summer evening sweat. He pushed the specs back up and smoothed fingers over his sweatband, coughing once to clear his throat. "Firstly and foremostly you're a dealer, though. Longbeach has already pitched the story that you're just looking to branch out into something more lucrative. No more of this dime-bagging shit, you're looking to play ball with the big cats."

Larry shrugged, picking himself up from the couch to fish a cold soda out of the fridge (which Holdaway declined with a small amount of disdain for grown men who'd prefer cola over a stout brew). "I like thieves. They got more opportunity for honor that dealers don't. And pimps... Don't get me started. Pimps are worst of all."

"Yeah well, despite how well it'd fit your profile, you ain't a pimp, so quitcher belly-aching. You're a dealer looking to climb ladders and get out of that life. Play it smart or play it like it's an issue with honor or whatever, shit, I trust your instinct."

Larry shrugged again, bolstered but not really satisfied. "So what's this anecdote? Anything I need to collaborate with 'Bama back east?"

"Naw, not that complicated." Holdaway bent to his briefcase, pulling out a small manuscript.

Larry whistled low, flipping the pages and skimming them. "Do I need to get ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille?"

With a scoff, Holdaway shook his head. "What if I say yes? The real thing goes down a week from now. You'll get the call, outta nowhere, and you don't wanna be caught with your dick in your hands." Despite his earlier criticism, Holdaway took a pull from Larry's cola. "So let's hear you put a little Goodfellas into that dialogue."

Larry nodded, reading the first few lines of the front page before he got to 'commode'. "Commode? Really?"

Holdaway laughed. "Ever notice how dumb crooks try to force their vocab to greater heights? Thought you'd get a kick out of that."

"Har-dy fucking har," Larry drawls, but the smile was back in his eyes. Commode. Yeah. It fit easily in his mouth and in the back of his mind. A bit of the icy alleys of Milwaukee and Boston settled with a bloodied baseball bat and a carpetbag full of cocaine. Larry took form around that story, so by the fifth telling of it the 'ey' and the 'wise guy' and the deep scar of cigar smoke had settled heavy in his voice. Larry was young, but suddenly Larry was seasoned, and a drug dealer had no business living to any old age anyhow, and the story of wanting to get out of that scene and into something bigger and better had solidified in Larry's confidence.


	3. Chapter 3

'Papa' Joe Cabot was a heap of gravel piled into mobility, gifted with two beady eyes and garnished with a phlegmy tobacco cough. He dressed in high-count European threads despite the L.A. heat, bald head high-shined by sweat. Cabot was immediately impressed with Larry, whose introductory greeting had pronounced his last name in its correct Italian inflection (_ka-boe_, not _ka-bot_). Larry was then invited to call Joe 'Papa', and the return grin was as two bulldogs having shuffled their feet and squared their shoulders and commiserated over a shared t-bone on how much hard fucking work it was being a bulldog in a world full of speed-balling terriers.

It was vintage brandy between them, though, not steak. Papa Joe's son, 'Nice-Guy' Eddie Cabot (athleticism hidden behind layers of unfortunate genetics), had accompanied and spent more of his time chatting up Longbeach than paying any attention to the new hire making intelligent conversation with his father. Eddie was an entire head taller than his father and shades more amicable, dopey-eyed and smart-mouthed and doubtlessly ruthless. The relationship Larry observed was that of a father and son who were very close, not only as family but as business partners. A fairly dangerous combination - usually in family operations there were dramas and leverages that could be taken advantage of, but Joe was too old for Eddie to _not _ be assured his inheritance.

There was more respect in the idle ribbing between their conversations than there was love, as was the way of the criminal family. Respect was more valuable, less likely to get anyone killed. The brandy had soothed Larry's initial nervousness, and he found himself calling Joseph Cabot 'Papa' as easily as if he'd known him for years, and Cabot responding with a nick-name he afforded his own son.

"So what are ya credentials, Junior?"

It had taken Larry a moment to realize that it was, in fact, he who was being addressed and not Eddie (who had disappeared to take Longbeach up on an offer for a transaction and would later reappear all coked up - bright as Sunday fucking Christmas). Larry's creativity had stalled, and Papa Joe cleared his throat and spat into a cocktail napkin before affixing his cigar in the heavy scar of his mouth.

Larry shrugged, tapping the pack of Apple Jack Smooths against the heel of his palm before plucking one free and worrying the filter at the corner of his grimace. "I haven't been in town for, what, little more'n a decade? All my credentials washed up on the east coast, and there's nothin' I can do to change that. I got a few deals started, but it's feeling like the same ol' shit and there ain't nothing stopping it from going tits-up again. 'Specially now that I hear this city got a new D.A. head, I gotta watch my ass." Another helpless shrug. "I want out, but I don't want _out_, Papa. More than that, I want up. Something with a bigger take, something I can maybe, I dunno, disappear to Mexico with."

"Sure, sure," Papa waved his hand down. "But what are yer _credentials_?"

Larry took a breath, knocked back the sickly-sweet brandy, and recited the commode story.

It was about halfway in the telling of the anecdote that their late fourth party appeared; some trusted contact of Papa Joe's who had been invited to the interview on account of his, quote, 'instinct'. Larry had faltered at the lack of introduction, but recovered quickly. The new arrival was L.A. Hustler personified, sallow and untouched by the California sun, large green eyes heavy with sleep or hangover or withdrawal. He shuffled up to the table and raked fingers through limp blonde hair, smiling like something wounded and mean in a black double-patched leather jacket.

The jacket met the back of the chair he claimed at Papa Joe's elbow, revealing a set of shoulders that argued with his slinking toady posture and his bow-legged high-noon-showdown gait. Those shoulders said 'fighter', every scar and tattoo and patch of wiry muscle. The bar table was thin and high, and it was no great strain to offer a light across the distance for the guy's cigarillo (vanilla, cheap and bent from its journey through his pocket), so Larry did just that.

When Larry got to the part in his story where he's calmly drying his hands with a felony amount of weed in his carry-on, new guy reveals a sharp-toothed grin to accompany Joe's sympathetic chortle. "So what'd you do then, besides shit yerself?" It was nasaly, that voice, grazing the underbelly of the city like any classic film villain, a smooth detached drawl. Larry thought he detected a hint of cheap London, or maybe a childhood in the dusty projects of Australia. New Arrival was inspecting Larry from a cool side-glance, watching without looking.

"Finished my business, took my bag and left. Dog going apeshit the whole time." Larry polished off his White Russian to a round of laughter. New Arrival ordered a Screwdriver and Papa Joe paused in his introductions to assign them nicknames.

"Mr... Orange here is an old colleague of mine." Joe grumbled. "Lissen here now, Mr., ah, White."

Larry smiled with just his eyes, Mr. Orange snickering down at his drink.

"No names," Joe dropped a heavy mitt on the table, empty glasses ringing. "Not 'cause I don't trust any of you," he straightened in his seat, palming the lapel of his jacket like an old Admiral. "But because I respects yer fukken privacy. An' you'll do the same, y'hear?"

"Sure, sure." Mr. Orange waves at Papa Joe like he's heard all this before. "This the kid, then?"

Larry allowed himself to bristle visibly. This 'Orange' character looked like he'd been around the block, sure, but there was no way he was out of his thirties, if that. Heroin had tattooed the inside of his left arm like a bad girlfriend, and drugs did everything but preserve one's youthful grace. Larry tried to clear the booze from his vision and squared his jaw, studying the upstart as surely as he himself was being studied. There, at the corner of Orange's eyes, the crow's feet. The hard squint of someone used to casually insulting bruisers.

Papa Joe physically inserted his bulk between their stare-down, rumbling an affirmative to Orange's question. "Junior here ain't got the credentials, but he wants in. I needs yer vote on the matter."

"Oh, welly well well." Orange sat back in the high stool, arms crossed behind his head as he stared down the length of his beak at Larry. On anybody else, that nose would look ridiculous, but on this Orange character it erred on the side of wolfish. "Might be a bit of a hot-head. Got the eyebrows of an Irishman." (Larry scowled deeply and honestly.) "And a faggoty haircut."

Larry stood from his seat. In any circle, thems was fightin' woids.

Eddie snorted into his beer. "That's a laugh. Ain't daddy been telling you to get that floppy beachboys mop of yours clipped already?"

Larry was surprised with the familiarity Eddie was suddenly revealing, but took it all in stride. His faggoty Irish blood was still hot on the defense, though. Orange had sneered back at Eddie Cabot and idly tossed a balled-up napkin at him. "Your ma likes something to hold onto."

The evening continued in much the same vein; good-natured chuckling after ribald insults between friends. Drinks and smokes diminished, Orange taking over for the evening's entertainment like a natural lackey who was used to catering to the Cabots. Orange, as far as Larry's report went, had a dangerous charm that would be difficult to whittle down to manageable proportions. Micky did not include his suspicions that it might come to blows between the thug Larry was supposed to be and the thug Orange actually was, his own instincts sensing a paradigm shift in group dynamics of the hierarchies of violent men. It was just conjecture, and maybe a little too much drink and ethnicity playing unfair cards against his pride. The men with whom he was supposed to work in the next few months didn't have to like Larry, but his life depended on them respecting him.

Another name had made it into the report, though a nickname. Some childhood friend of Eddie's with the greaser throw-back 'Toothpick', and at the mention of his parole Orange had closed himself off. Papa Joe filled the space left behind with his own huffing pride. Larry chewed the new info over like a dog distracted from its fight with a bone. If Toothpick was a parole from four years of good behavior in penn, then his identity was just a file search out of Holdaway's grasp. Even closer once Larry met the guy and had a face to put to a document.

The evening ended, surprisingly, with an apology. Joe had shook Larry's hand and clapped him on the back with a few promising words of praise, then grumbled at Eddie's absence as if he'd forgotten that he'd been there until ten minutes hence (this is your brain, this is your brain on drugs, and _this_ is your brain once old age catches up to it). Longbeach had flashed a thumbs-up and Orange had been waiting behind Joe's departure to offer his hand and grin around a 'sorry-for-the-shit-just-testing-the-cut-of-your-gib' spiel.

Larry hardly remembered what Orange had said exactly because damn if that grin wasn't razor sharp and that hand warm and dry and bony, cheap vanilla cigarillo smoke lingering in the back of Larry's throat like he'd taken it shotgun.

That didn't make it into the report, either.


	4. Chapter 4

"So whaddya think, Fred?"

The interior of Joseph Cabot's pearly white limousine was soaked in years of cigar smoke and criminal rendezvous; you couldn't get the bloodstains out of the trunk's felt lining and the minibar had been dry-docked years hence. Orange sat back, comfortable in the leather of the seats as well as in the warm rumbling envelope of Papa Joe Cabot's confidence.

"I dunno what to think, honestly. Seems like a goodfella; nothing unusual stands out. Might not be good for the job, though. We need cool heads."

"He's smart. Kept a cool head in that train station restroom, dinnit he?"

Orange holds both hands up. "Hey, I ain't arguin'. But I bet he's smart enough to know what kinda story is gonna get him this job," he taps his forehead and points back at Joe, "Coulda been a mall cop with a lost poodle in that commode for all we know."

Joe laughs, the crags of his face folding over with thought. "Kept a cool head when you was baiting him."

Orange's return laugh is sharp and derisive. "The only reason he didn't reach over and pop me one was because you were standing between us. You ain't gonna be there on this job, and I know you done hired some pricks way mouthier than me."

Joe growls through his teeth. "Fellas that could do with a good gob-smack, you ask me."

"But not on a job."

"I'd half wish to smack 'em myself, sometimes. You young fuckin' jokers."

Orange's whole body shrugs, but he can't help grinning. "I'm not sayin' he don't deserve the chance to prove himself, Papa. Just... you know. That's the only thing I'd be worried over, if you let him in on the team. Eddie would have his hands full keeping the peace."

Joe's heavy face lights up. "Yeah," he chuckles, sitting back with his cigar. "Yeah, but I kinda like that idea. Test the kid's chops, see how he handles the prollem. Gotta work with all sorts in this business, and I wanna see how my boy gains their cooperation."

"All right," Orange has pursed his mouth in that speculative 'don't-come-running-to-me-cos-I'd-told-you-so' way. "I'll save ya the details when somebody ends up dead."

"Any upstart going to put his own pride before the job deserves to end up dead," Joe grumbles sternly around the cloud of smoke, jabbing a thick finger through the lowtown jazz that fills the cabin. "If our new mick is the one pulling the trigger - hell, then he's doing us a favor, 'cus ain't no room on this team for a fella what don't know how to read a man and back the fuck down."

Orange's frown turns academic, thumb scratching just under his chin. "What if it's the mick who needs to back the fuck down?"

Joe's laugh carried the heavy wisdom of his years, "He's smart enough to know the difference, ain't he?"


End file.
